The ILLEGAL (yeah, "warrantless," too, that's what makes it ILLEGAL) wiretapping of millions of Americans is shaping up to be yet another uber-Nixonian-redux chapter. Why, you ask? Well, perhaps you heard about Andrea "Mrs. Alan Greenspan" Mitchell's "speculative" comment that Christiane Amanpour's phone line was tapped? Mrs. Greenspan was interviewing the NYT's James Risen, who broke the wiretapping story in the first place. Here's the comment in question:
Mitchell: You don't have any information, for instance, that a very prominent journalist, Christiane Amanpour, might have been eavesdropped upon?
Now you won't find that on the NBC website transcript, because it's been removed. Wiped clean. Sorry, Winston, but 2 + 2 really can be 5 after all. Except, of course, Orwell didn't envision blogs, which have been reporting the hell out of this little Big Brother move by NBC.
But now WHY oh why would Andrea Mitchell "hypothetically" name drop Amanpour? I mean, why would she be "hearing" that Amanpour was bugged? Amanpour's just a CNN reporter, right? I mean, a better reporter than Andrea Mitchell could ever dream of being, but the day Screech worked at the school paper he was probably a better reporter than Andrea Mitchell could dream of being. I don't like Andrea Mitchell, in case you can't tell. If you've never seen her before, check her out -- and keep a sweater handy: she will make your flesh crawl. Then think about her and Alan Greenspan together. In bed. Make it two sweaters. She's also really chummy with Scooter Libby. Okay, two sweaters and a down jacket.
But why Amanpour? Well, here's the thing: Amanpour is married. It gets better. But why listen to me when Americablog runs it down so nicely:
1. Such a wiretap would likely include [Amanpour's] home, office, and cell phones, and email correspondence, at the very least.
2. That means anyone Christiane has conversed with in the past four years, at least by phone or email, could have had their conversation taped by the US government.
3. That also means that anyone who uses any of Christiane's telephones or computers (work or home) could also have had their conversation bugged.
4. This includes Christiane's husband, former Clinton administration senior official Jamie Rubin, who was spokesman for the State Department.
5. Jamie Rubin was also chief foreign policy adviser to General Wesley Clark's presidential campaign, and then worked as a senior national security adviser to John Kerry's presidential campaign.
6. Did Jamie Rubin ever use his home phone, his wife's work phone, his wife's cell phone, her home computer or her work computer to communicate with John Kerry or Wesley Clark? If so, those conversations would have been bugged if Bush was tapping Amanpour.
7. Did Jamie Rubin ever in the past four years communicate with any elected officials in Washington, DC - any Senators or members of the US House? Any senior members of the Democratic party?
8. Has Rubin spoken with Bill Clinton, his former boss, in the past 4 years?
See, that's the "shades of Watergate" part: wiretapping top Dems running against the CREEP in office. That's what Nixon did. That's why it's called "Watergate," because they were doing the bugging at the DNC campaign headquarters in the Watergate building. So you really can't get anymore "Watergate" than bugging the DNC election campaign.
This is a HUGE story, folks. But like the Watergate burglary, it's being severely underreported by the MSM.
Of course a full 24 hours have passed and NBC has yet to explain Mitchell's comment or their wiping of it. They're (and you know who "they" are: the Bush administration and their friends in the MSM) hoping it will drift away into the forgetful ether occupied by people like whoever it was that was sending anthrax letters to the top Dems in congress who opposed the Patriot Act (yeah, hey, right! Who was that guy?! Why'd we never catch him...huh...white girl missing...Robert Blake killed his wife...coal mine...plane on the runway...sale on at Wal-Mart?! I'm going!).
But, again, thanks to the internet that elected president Al Gore helped usher into being, blogs exist. And they're going to do the 5th Estate's job, whether the 5th Estate likes it or not. So comment it up, send this link to friends, keep knocking on their door of lies and tell them the truth has a warrant and it's coming in.